


Pointless

by EndoplasmicPanda



Series: Endo's Oneshots [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, fluff?, in this pairing?, it's more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 18:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: They’ve been walking for months now, each night as cut and dry as the last. The Hidden Mist is far behind them, lost among the sea of trees - but every time Zabuza looks into Haku’s eyes he still sees it there, twisting around the pupil like a wingless dragon, caught in a well of self-destruction that Zabuza realizes, disturbingly, might be mirrored in his own.





	Pointless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nemesis_queer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nemesis_queer/gifts).



“Where’s that… thing?”

Haku blinks, looks up from his bowl of porridge, casts a frown that doesn’t belong on a face that innocent, and Zabuza kicks himself for his brevity.

“My what?”

No turning back now. “Your bear,” Zabuza says, crossing his arms tighter over his chest, letting the bark of the tree he’s leaning against carve hieroglyphics into his skin. He ignores it. “The one you had when we first met.”

Haku blinks. “Oh,” he says. “That.”

“Yes, that,” Zabuza says. “Where is it?”

“I left it behind.”

The clearing they’ve made their home in for the night is surrounded on three sides by walls of bushes and bark; the rest is gravel, curving around a corner and off into the deepest parts of the forest. 

The leaves rattle with Haku’s voice, and the moonlight catches it and lets it hang in the air like tinsel. 

“Oh,” Zabuza says. He swallows.

They’ve been walking for months now, each night as cut and dry as the last. The Hidden Mist is far behind them, lost among the sea of trees - but every time Zabuza looks into Haku’s eyes he still sees it there, twisting around the pupil like a wingless dragon, caught in a well of self-destruction that Zabuza realizes, disturbingly, might be mirrored in his own.

“I didn’t need it anymore,” Haku says - lies. They both know it. It’s a pointless exercise.

Zabuza runs his tongue over the backs of his teeth, lets the rough edges carved there by the blunt edge of a jagged knife dig into the flesh of his skin and draw blood. Another pointless exercise - pain does nothing but amplify. Zabuza knows this, too.

“I see,” he says, knowing far too well that he doesn’t. He can feel the vacancy - a hole left by something immaterial and yet, somehow, anything but. It’s why he asked Haku where it was in the first place, after all.

They sit in silence for another long heartbeat, letting the moon arc across the sky and dip behind slender, wispy clouds. Zabuza settles in against the tree, lets the inside of his eyelids taunt him.

“It was a rabbit.”

Zabuza blinks. “What?”

“Not a bear,” Haku says. He’s pulled his knees up to his chest, and he’s hugging them, sinking his chin into the gap between each limb. “It was a rabbit.”

Zabuza tilts his head to the side. Haku isn’t meeting his eye, and, again, they both know why. It’s another pointless gesture. This one, at least, they have identified as being unnecessary. “Oh.”

“It’s fine,” Haku says, nearly whispers, and Zabuza realizes that the tone of his voice bleeds blame.

Zabuza does nothing. Says nothing, because he can’t. He doesn’t know how to. But silence is just as much a response as any other, and like always, Zabuza finds himself suffering at the hands of his tongue.

It throbs in his mouth. He runs the open scab over another tooth.

He’d said something. He must have. A few days before - a sigh, or a murmur, or a glance of derision in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Haku had seen it, caught it, twisted it up inside his own head, concocted a reason that centered around himself, and acted on it like an order. 

He had blamed himself for Zabuza’s discontent, whatever it may have been at the time, and now here Haku is, cold, lonely, hugging himself like he used to hug that rabbit, letting the thin, bony skin of his knees cut red crescent moons into his skin.

It’s the curse of the Mist - the curse of the surviving. Suffer, regardless of the circumstances.

But Zabuza realizes, looking up, surveying their campsite, watching the dying embers in their fire pit tell stories in the air, that they’re not in the Mist anymore. They’re alone, in the wilderness, with nothing but nature and rain as their guides.

Suffering for the sake of suffering, it seemed, was just as pointless an exercise as the rest.

* * *

(When Haku wakes the next morning and there’s a rabbit strung up and tied to the outer wall of his tent, he doesn’t question it. When he unties it and leashes it and carries it in his arms, he lets the warmth of the creature bleed through his chest into whatever sat inside.

He also doesn’t question the sparkle in his master’s eyes.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> Follow me on [**[tumblr]**](http://endoplasmicpanda.tumblr.com/)!


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